Twitter Desktop Applications
There’s plenty of desktop applications that use Twitter’s API to allow a better experience of Twitter (I’m @djsteen, yo!) than just by using the website. Before some of these latest applications were created I would open Twitter.com in my browser every morning and click the next button (now replaced with a more button) until I’d read tweets from everyone I follow. Yes, I read them all. I even used to read all the @replies, but Twitterers like @ChrisBrogan reply to people far to often and I couldn’t keep up with that. Thus, I’ve set my @replies setting to ‘@ replies to the people I’m following’. This setting is a must if you follow more than ~15 people and like to read all their tweets.
Don’t get me wrong, Chris Brogan’s engagement with his community is awesome, but I personally can’t keep up.
Back in 2007 I’d tried using Twitter applications such as Twitterific and TwitterFox, but neither of them stuck and I continued using the website.
NB: Some of the following applications only run on Mac OS X. If you want to try those ones out, get a Mac.
TweetDeck
Back in July 2008 I was visiting with my best friend Leah and was using TweetDeck on her MacBook. You can customise the colours of application, and she’d chosen an extreme bright pink/green combo that was almost blinding to look at. I think this is the sole reason I didn’t try out TweetDeck back then for myself.
Towards the end of 2008 I believe I was listening to a show on the TWiT network and Leo Laporte mentioned he was using TweetDeck. So I decided to download it. Of course, I had to download Adobe Air too. I’m not sure what the benefits of Adobe Air are, but it seems like a middle man that really isn’t needed.
Back then TweetDeck didn’t have spell checking, the ability to Cmd/Option+arrow to skip over words, nor the more recently integrated Facebook status update option. Regardless, it was my new way of reading and posting tweets.
Zoom on forward to April 2009 and we now have a plethora of Twitter Applications to suit everyone’s needs and desires. Well, almost everyone. The only feature TweetDeck is missing for me right now is multiple accounts. The most recently released applications all have this feature, and I thought TweetDeck would have counterbalanced with this feature by now.
Alas, I will continue to use TweetDeck over the following applications.
Nambu
I only discovered Nambu earlier this month when Neil told me about it during an IM conversation. It supports multiple accounts, and has a multiple column view. There doesn’t seem to be a way to rearrange the columns though. Nor can you change to a different account when in the multiple column view.
Another minor fault to me is the lack of a way to change the colour(s) of the application like I can in TweetDeck.
Seesmic Desktop
Again, Neil referred me to this application. The next day I saw lots of people talking about it on Twitter and blogs. At first I thought ‘What the heck is a video blogging web application doing creating a Twitter application?’ Then I discovered that Seesmic also created the Twitter application Twirl. I guess it shows that Seesmic is a versitile company and want to me known for more than just video. Personally, I can’t stand Seesmic video. The entire site is—- I just looked at Seesmic.com for the first time in months and they’ve completely changed the design. It looks a lot better. It seems they’re trying to create threads of video a little bit like a Twitter feed. Interesting.
Now, back to the application — which I just realised wasn’t installed on my computer yet.
First look: I’m not sure if it’s a Twitter API problem, but no tweets appear in any of the columns in Seesmic Desktop. It allows the creation of multiple columns quite easily whilst keeping the left sidebar (containing multiple accounts, saved searches, and userlists/groups) visible. Nambu fails to keep the sidebar visible when in multiple column mode.
I’ll update this if Seesmic Desktop woos me when it begins to work.
Tweetie for Mac
I recently bought Tweetie for my iPhone and I absolutely love it! It allows multiple accounts, displays TwitPic images within the application (no need to open the web browser), and also displays hyperlinks the app (again, no switching to the web browser). For the longest time I used Hahlo on the iPhone, but now Tweetie has replaced it for me.
Alas, this is about desktop applications. Tweetie released its desktop application less than a week ago and there’s been mixed reviews about it in the Twitter community.
Pros:
- It handles multiple accounts, and threads DM conversations.
Cons:
- It lacks groups and a multiple column view.
- It’s very much like the iPhone application and thus doesn’t allow for the screen real estate a full size computer screen has.
- It costs US$15!!! By comparison, the iPhone app costs $3. I’m very happy to pay a few dollars for the iPhone app, but I figured the desktop application would be completely free. NB: There is a free desktop version that is ad-supported. I’m using this and I have yet to see an ad.
Conclusion
I’m still going to continue to use TweetDeck on my Mac. I’ve been hoping for multiple accounts in TweetDeck for the last two releases with no such luck, so I’ll just continue to wait.
Having all the applications I reviewed above open whilst writing this meant that Twitter’s API was exceeded in a matter of moments. This is one of the major downsides in using any Twitter application. If you follow a lot of people, the 100 requests per hour enforced by Twitter’s API will probably frustrate you.
What’s your favourite Twitter application, and why?
